Hiding Places
by Emma CS Me
Summary: "It's not your lord father I have to worry about. Or your lady mother. Or Lord Robb, or Princess Sansa, or even little Rickon the babe. No. It's you. You're the one this whole family revolves around. Without you, they'd all fall apart." Long ago, Theon figured something out. Now, he talks to someone he knows who doesn't know him, wonders who's watching him, and what happens next


**Author's Notes:** Written for a prompt on the asoiaf kink meme:

"Bran [or Starks in general] + Theon (Gen). Keane's "Somewhere Only We Know" + "Did you always hate us?"

[Truly Lost] Theon (or Reek) wandering through Winterfell and into the Godswood."

...Although for meta reasons, I would understand if you chose to listen to the Lily Allen version instead.

* * *

"There you are."

"Cheater," comes a voice from the hole in the tree trunk. "It doesn't count unless you can see me."

"I can see you," Theon says. "I can see your shadow."

"Doesn't count."

"Says who?"

"Says me!"

Theon Greyjoy is a lord of the Iron Islands. He is above arguing over the rules of hide and go seek with a seven year old. Fuck, why isn't Robb here? Isn't entertaining the useless whelps his parents keep having meant to be his job? "Then get out of there," he says.

"No," comes the voice, and Theon can _tell_ he's smirking (as a renowned smirker himself, Theon can tell the signs). "Not unless you come get me."

Theon glares, even though he knows the kid can't see him. "I'm not climbing up there."

"Yes you are."

"I'm _not._ " He really should be above this. But he likes this doublet. And he should also be above climbing trees like a monkey. _And everyone thinks little Rickon is a terror._ Bran just hmms slightly, and waits, and Theon half-considers leaving him there before he remembers that Lady Stark is a very scary woman.

Theon sighs. If he breaks his neck, he'll haunt the kid for the rest of his days.

It takes awhile, and he almost slips more times than he cares to mention (and the boy just laughs at Theon's squeal of alarm), but eventually he makes it up to the branch where Bran has found a cove just big enough to conceal a boy his age. His breeches catch on the bark and he pauses to get his breath. "Was that really worth it?"

"Yes."

Bran laughs more at his huff of irritation. "Alright, I'll get out," he says, and Theon almost falls as he starts climbing out and almost tramples over Theon.

"You'll be the death of me."

Bran shrugs. "How'd you find me, anyway?"

"Oh, I know all the hiding spots," he can't help but gloat.

"Why?"

 _In case your father wants to chop my head off,_ he thinks, but Bran doesn't need to know that. "Girls like to know where they are," he smirks, and Bran frowns in confusion. "You'll understand someday, kid." Theon ruffles his hair, which, given they're still precariously perched in a tree is possibly a mistake, but he handles it with grace he reckons.

"I'm not a _kid._ "

Theon doesn't even dignify that with a response, just starts the slow, awkward climb back down. Bran's climb is neither of those things, of course.

"Okay," Bran grins at him once they make it back to the ground. "Now you go hide."

"I'm not hiding." He can half-justify playing this game with Bran as honing his hunting skills (if not as much as just going hunting would). There's no point to doing it the other way around though. "I'm not."

"Yes you are."

"Am not."

"Are too!"

"Am not–"

* * *

Bloodied men filled the Godswood for days, even if King Stannis didn't like it. Some of them followed the Old Gods, some the New, some the Red and even Asha went once, he thinks. Men visit Godswoods before battles and after, and forget the gods the rest of the time.

Theon couldn't go until they had stopped coming, he didn't dare until the dead of the night when no-one would join him. He remembered something Lady Stark once said about how in the South the godswoods were just a place to sit and relax and be alone, and she looked at him like she expected him to understand, like she thought he was a Southerner (well he certainly wasn't a Northerner), like she thought they could grow whole woods on the Iron Islands.

The moon is bright and the sky is clear, and it's cold but Theon's used to that, he even has a cloak in which to wrap himself now, if only a peasant's one. Perhaps he shouldn't go wandering the grounds alone at night, but he's not a prisoner anymore. Or is he? There are no guards on his door. But perhaps this will make them kill him. They don't seem to know what else to do with him; he had been ready for death, happy for it, thinking of Jeyne and how he saved her and soon he'd see Robb again and–

No-one had expected Ser Davos. If King Stannis had been a different man Theon thinks he would have run to the man and embraced him. Everyone had heard he was dead. Even less did anyone expect Rickon Stark – a wild beast as dirty as his wolf, who barely knew his own name. But Theon recognised him. He was the only one who'd met the boy. Rickon didn't recognise him, and Theon was glad.

Now he is free, or probably not. They don't know what to do with him. The northern lords still want him dead, but Stannis sentenced him to die for Bran and Rickon, not any of the rest of it, and now he knows they are not dead he will not find some other crime to kill him for.

The northern lords called him a kinslayer, and it made Theon think. _If I would be a kinslayer for killing them, what would Ned Stark be for killing me?_ He was not so foolish, so brave as to say such a think aloud. Theon could swear he saw King Stannis flinch, but perhaps that is too many – weeks? months? years? – spent trying to read the blood and rage behind Bolton eyes talking.

His legs don't carry him far and he collapses beneath the first weirwood he finds. He wants to keep going, to find the last one he visited – red eyes wise and sad – but it doesn't matter. The weirwoods have different faces, but their eyes are all the same.

Theon runs his fingers – what remains of them – along the bark, smooth and strange. It's like touching something from another world. When he closes his eyes, he thinks he is wearing a glove – black and gold, like all his favourite things, there are leaves in his hair and someone is laughing – a boy is laughing. There's a boy.

There _is_ a boy.

He spins around and sees said boy, standing in the dark and not laughing, lurking like an animal, a predator about to pounce. Theon doesn't mind. It's not as if he can run. Stannis's men have tried their best, scrubbing and shaping little Rickon into something the shape of a lordling, but it hasn't worked. He still looks like nothing so much as a dog gone feral.

Theon still looks like a dog starved and beaten and never allowed to go feral, but to be fair, no-one's really tried to make him look any different.

He wonders if the boy is here to claw out his throat. That would be fitting. But no, Rickon doesn't even recognise him, so why would he?

(Wild dogs don't need reasons to bite.)

"They say you killed me." Theon flinches. _Last time I saw you, you could barely talk._ "They say you stole the castle. They say you hated my brother. They say you were my brother."

It's strange. Rickon is still such a small boy. In Theon's mind he had been Ramsay's for years, long enough for little Rickon to grow tall, to become a man, to become a warrior. He could see it so clearly in his mind, but he wasn't seeing Rickon at all, he was seeing Robb. He could live being Ramsay's Reek, if only because he had no other choice, but the thought of a world without a Robb in it was too horrible to contemplate. But there is no Robb in the world, and Rickon is just a boy. He's no older than Bran.

Bran is always a boy in Theon's mind. He will be a boy when Theon is grey on his deathbed (Theon is already grey, and he should have met his death long ago). His eyes are wide and sad, and he will always be the boy who looks at Theon like he can't understand why Theon would do this.

 _They say you hated my brother_. But which brother?

The answer's the same in any case.

"Don't ask me how much of it's true," he says, and he's surprised by how his voice shakes. "I don't know."

"Why?" Theon doesn't have an answer to that. He looks back at the weirwood and its red eyes, looking for something. He can't answer Rickon's question, and so he asks a question of his own.

"What are you doing out here?"

Rickon pauses. It's a very human moment. "They say this is my home," he says. "But I don't remember. I don't remember anything. They said if I recognised anywhere..."

Theon keeps searching those eyes for _something_ , whatever it was that he heard her before, whatever it was that got him out. Whatever it was that made it seem worth getting out. _The old gods. They know my name._

"You?"

Theon thinks before answering. "...I don't have anywhere else to go. I don't belong anywhere else."

"Do you belong here?"

The wind rustles through the branches like it's saying something, but Theon can't understand it, not anymore. Maybe he never could and he was just desperate enough to think otherwise. "Maybe," he says, and it feels like a lie. _He'll know I lied._ "I don't know how I'd know."

The wind comes stronger now. "Do you really not remember anything?"

He looks back at Rickon, waiting for an answer. Something of the wolf in him has faded. Now stands a confused child, which scares Theon far more. "I remember a boy," says Rickon.

The wind. _The old gods. They know my name._ Theon remembers a boy too. He feels like his heart could burst for joy. He feels sick. He remembers wise, sad eyes and it's almost like someone is looking for him, but what could they want with him?

"...He sent me away."

Theon frowns. He doesn't remember that.

"Do you know why?"

Theon shakes his head. "No."

He knows why Rickon went away, but that's not the same thing. He doesn't know why Bran would send Rickon away, but he's sure the boy had good reasons. Bran always had good reasons. He was a very good little lordling, everyone said so. He thought they were just mocking him, but no, he remembers Bran. He would have been a very good lord.

Maybe he still will be. After all, Robb is gone.

"Rickon," Theon says. The boy looks surprised. Theon smiles. "That's your name."

"I know my name," says the boy. _Lucky you,_ thinks Theon. "It's everything else I don't know."

"I'm sorry." Maybe Theon's not talking to Rickon; maybe there's no point, if Rickon can't even remember what he did. But he has to say it to _someone_ , and he does not know if he means someone in particular.

Rickon doesn't answer.

The wind comes once more and for a second Theon thinks it might sweep him away. He is so thin now. He thinks it might carry him back to Pyke, but no, why would it? That's the opposite of what it wants.

(Since when does the wind want anything?)

"Rickon," he says it again. "Do you hear–?"

The wind blows harder. Theon looks at Rickon, worried, but there's no chance he'll be blown away – there is something of the earth in him, no matter how the handmaids try and scrub the dirt away. He practically has roots. The wind can't touch him.

 _Theon._ He doesn't know what the wind wants from him, but he would give it, whatever it is. _Rickon._ Those eyes, red and wise and sad, and they saved him, and Rickon saved him too even if he didn't mean to, but for _what_?

The wind fades, and Theon remembers he asked a question. Rickon answers. "No."

Theon cringes. "I'm sorry."

"Why?"

He touches the bark again, as strange as ever, and no matter how much time he spends here it will always be strange.

He looks past the eyes now, up into the branches, over the tops of the trees. But the leaves are too thick, he can't see anything. He could try climbing the tree, but he thinks he'd just fall and die, which wouldn't be so bad but it would be a waste, wouldn't it?

Lady Stark wouldn't approve.

(He almost laughs.)

It's like there's something waiting there for him, but he doesn't know what it'll do once it finds him.

* * *

They play that stupid game for hours, until the sun sets, and when it does Bran insists he's absolutely exhausted, he couldn't walk one more step, Theon will have to carry him back to the castle. Theon doesn't believe him for a second, but Bran is a Stark and he's made up his mind, so sure, he _could_ walk back to the castle, but he _won't_. So Theon huffs in irritation and throws the boy over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, walking as quickly as possible just to annoy him. But Bran's too stubborn to complain.

The walk seems to make Bran think. "You know," he says, "if you hated it that much, you didn't _have_ to play with me."

Theon considers putting him down just to glare at him. "You tell me this now?"

"I mean," he says, "you could have just left me in that tree."

"And faced your mother? No thank you."

Bran giggles. "She's not that scary."

"Yes she is."

"No she isn't."

" _Stop that."_

Bran laughs, louder this time. "You don't fool me, Theon Greyjoy," he says. "You like me. You think I'm your friend."

"Any more lip from you kid, and you're walking."

"I should be walking anyway." An excellent point that is, and yet Theon doesn't drop him. He sighs.

"You see Bran, I'm clever," he says. "I've got to keep your family on side, right? And what's the best way to do that?"

Bran makes a confused noise. He probably has no idea what Theon's on about. Theon barely knows what he's on about.

"I figured it out," he says. "See, it's not your lord father I have to worry about. Or your lady mother. Or Lord Robb, or Princess Sansa, or even little Rickon the babe. No. It's you." Poor Bran must be even more confused. "You're the one this whole family revolves around. Without you, they'd all fall apart."

Bran thinks this over a moment. Then he giggles again. It's a child's giggle, one that doesn't really understand, but is happy anyway.

Theon smiles to himself. Maybe he is a little fond of the kid.

* * *

"He's watching me."

The boy is watching him.

"Who is?"


End file.
